A sixth-grader was sick of coloring. So she skipped six grades to attend Cal State L.A.

Mia Turel was in first grade when she asked her father to teach her how to chart the probability of losing her baby teeth over time. By second grade, she was reading high school-level books on Martin Luther King Jr. Then she became fascinated by TED Talks on global warming and marine biology.

So when her sixth-grade teacher assigned the class to color a map of Mesopotamia, Mia wasn't exactly thrilled.

"I'm sorry, I'm not interested in coloring a map," she told her mother. "Coloring is pointless."

With that, Mia left Crescent Elementary in Anaheim. She studied at home for the rest of the year - and then, at age 12, jumped six grade levels to enter Cal State Los Angeles as a freshman last fall.

While the admissions scandal has transfixed the nation's attention on elite universities such as UCLA and USC, the school of choice for many whiz kids like Mia is Cal State L.A.

For nearly four decades, the campus